LZY 275t Refueling Station and 160t Planetary Tug

[ScottyDoesKnow]

For when you don't want to waste time building one of those fancy multi-launch space stations, the LZY Refueling Station:

7 orange tanks, 1 large RCS tank, 1 large docking port, 6 regular docking ports, 6 junior docking ports, 115 parts (in orbit). Just retract a solar panel when you need to dock to the sides. It also has 7 nuclear engines so it can easily be used as an interplanetary tug, or moved on its own to act as a refueling station there. This one took about 10% of the fuel/RCS inside it to get into a 125k orbit. It can probably be done better but I'm not the greatest pilot. I also got another one into orbit with only ~2% wasted by adding 36 solid fuel boosters, but that looks ugly and it's trickier to pilot.

Piloting: 0 will turn off gimbaling on the first stage. You'll drop your first stage at 10k which is when I start turning east. Be ready to start burning well before apoapsis since you'll need to start using the nuclear engines before orbit, probably before you have a periapsis above ground. The upside to that is no debris, everything will burn up. If you manage to get into orbit before dropping the last stage, it has a remote guidance unit so you can de-orbit it. It also has a large RCS tank that you can transfer from before dropping it.

Other controls: 1 toggles the solar panels, 9 disables the nuclear engines once you're in your desired orbit.

Craft files below. I'll include the ugly (solid boosters) version and also just the launcher. The part counts are heavy (666 for just the launcher, spoooky), so be prepared for a laggy launch.

Refueling Station Mk 02

Refueling Station Mk 02 Ugly

Launcher 200 Mk 01 - It can't get this thing all the way into orbit, but I assume it can get at least 200t up there easily

Warning: by far the weakest points are the adapters between the nuclear engines and the orange tanks. They should probably be stitched, but that adds at least 21 more parts and looks bad. The station will survive launch as-is, but feel free to add some struts if you have issues.

Edited October 27, 2013 by ScottyDoesKnow

[ScottyDoesKnow]

And now introducing the LZY Interplanetary Tug. Same basic concept but 4 tanks instead of 7. Gets into orbit with dV to spare and can still be used as a refueling station. Weighing in at a measly 160t with only 61 parts (in orbit).

Interplanetary Tug Mk 01

Edited October 27, 2013 by ScottyDoesKnow

[shoveycat]

Nice, whats the dV on the tug?

[ScottyDoesKnow]

Nice, whats the dV on the tug?

I have absolutely no idea, don't think I've ever calculated dV. I tried installing engineer redux earlier today but all the parts were locked and I've already unlocked all the science, so don't know exactly how that works.

[shoveycat]

Engineer Redux is not quite compatible with .22, if you transfer the file to a sandbox game, you should be able to see it

[ScottyDoesKnow]

Here are the results: http://i.imgur.com/F7GeQPx.jpg

Looks like 17k dV total? 7k before dropping off the 3 outer tanks, 10k after. Though you will lose the docking ports if you drop them.